1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electron emission device and an electron emission display using the electron emission device.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, electron emission elements are classified into those using hot cathodes as an electron emission source, and those using cold cathodes as the electron emission source. There are several types of cold cathode electron emission elements, including Field Emitter Array (FEA) elements, Surface Conduction Emitter (SCE) elements, Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) elements, Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor (MIS) elements, and Ballistic Electron Emitting (BSE) elements.
Typically, the electron emission elements are arrayed to form an electron emission device with a first substrate. The electron emission device is combined with a second substrate, on which a light emission unit having phosphor layers and an anode electrode are formed, to form an electron emission display.
That is, the typical electron emission device includes electron emission regions and a plurality of driving electrodes functioning as scan and data electrodes. The electron emission regions and the driving electrodes are operated to control the on/off operation of each pixel and the amount of electron emission.
The electron emission display excites phosphor layers using the electrons emitted from the electron emission regions to display an image.
The cathode electrode of the electron emission device is typically formed of a transparent conductive material such as indium tin oxide (ITO).
However, when the size of an electron emission display is increased, the length of the cathode electrode also increases. In this case, there may be a high voltage drop due to the high resistance of the ITO used to form the cathode electrode. As a result, the electron emission uniformity along a longitudinal direction of the cathode electrode is deteriorated. This may cause a luminance non-uniformity (or difference) between the pixels of the electron emission display.